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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Kids vs. Fire

No, my kids didn't set anything on fire. I'm reasonably sure the boy would only do that if it occurred to him to use fire to conduct an experiment, and the girl wouldn't do it unless she was deliberately trying to kill me.

Don't ask how I know.

Anyway, all is well around here. When the children checked the Christmas chain this morning, it suggested that we "dress up and go out to eat."

The children spent a good 30 minutes bickering with one another about where to go. "Let's go eat Mexican!" "NO, Italian!" "No, I want fish! Red Lobster is the best restaurant ever!" "No, I want to go eat hamburgers, not fish! Mommy, Mommy, a hamburger is the ONLY thing I want. I'm not going to a stinky fish place!"

You get the idea. It was one of those times when Mommy has to step in and say, "OH MY GOD WILL YOU BOTH SHUT UP ALREADY!!!!"

OK, so I didn't actually say that, but I thought it really, really hard. In reality, I told them to hush or we wouldn't go anywhere at all.

I love making threats like that three days before Christmas because the Santa card isn't playing any more, especially with the boy. "Mom, we know the presents are already made. We've been good enough. And I've never met anyone who's gotten sticks." (At this point I mutter to myself something about him being the first. This is the boy who, when Oz and I were going over details regarding Lifestyles of the Incarcerated, didn't believe us and now wants to take a tour of the jail just to see if we're really right about all the surveillance and cheap food.)

I busted out the phone and started going through a list of restaurants and came across one that's a local version of a Benihana. It had been years since Oz and I had been there. The kids had never been. So Oz called and made reservations, and we got dressed in clothes that didn't have stains or holes (and M2 threw a fit because I made her put her boots inside her bootcut jeans and nobody was going to see the decoration, Mama) and off we went.

We were seated with two couples. We had a relatively young chef. And when he wrote the word "OIL" in oil on the griddle and lit it on fire, M1 nearly flew backward out of his seat. Thank heaven there was a wall behind him.

When he recovered, he rubbed his face and said, "He wrote the word oil, Mom... with oil."

"That's right," I said, impressed that he could read upside down.

He enjoyed the food and really liked watching the performance, up till the time when the chef created the onion stack and filled that with oil and drew a line across the griddle and lit the whole thing on fire again. I think he would have dove under the table if there had been a hole to dive into.

"Was that cool?" I asked him as he stared at me, owl-eyed.

"No. Do I have eyebrows? That was too close and too hot."

M2, on the other hand, laughed at his concerns. She promptly chirped, "THAT WAS COOL!!!"

Is it wrong that I agree with my girl on this one? There's just something about fire...